This message is Mozilla's alternative proposal for the licence for the
HTML5 specification.
Our understanding is that the goal of the various licensing options
proposed is to prevent the modification and republishing of the entire
specification ("forking") but otherwise to meet all of the use cases[0],
which request permission for a wide variety of types of reuse.
As noted, we believe that the ability to modify and republish in this
way is an important freedom. This message and alternative proposal is
not intended as a criticism of the work of the PSIG, because licences
which permit it were expressly outside its remit.
Those who wish to prevent 'forking' need to be specific - are they
against the forking of the specification, or the divergence of
implementations?
If I were to take the HTML5 spec, make some changes to it, put it up on
my website as GervTML5, and send a message to the browser vendors
declaring myself as the new canonical source of web standards, I suggest
that the effect this would have on the W3C and the progression of the
HTML5 standard would be minor - confined, perhaps, to a raised eyebrow
and a snicker at my arrogance and hubris. The forking of the
specification, in itself, as long as the fork is clearly labelled as
such to avoid confusion, is not something to concern anyone.
The 'problem' arises when a subset of vendors actually decide to follow
an alternative spec instead of the W3C one - in other words, it is
divergence of implementations which is the issue. But history tells us
that attempts to enforce spec compliance legally, by companies who have
recourse to law far more readily than the W3C, have been doomed to
misery and failure - not just for them, but for their technology. As
Tantek points out[1], the effect of the W3C taking such action is highly
unlikely to be positive for the Web.
So Mozilla wishes to propose the use of the Creative Commons CC0
License[2] for the HTML5 spec. This licence is a well-understood
lawyer-checked internationalized licence from a respected player in the
licensing space. Its terms and intent are completely clear, and do not
suffer from the problem of being interpreted different ways by different
people. And, examining the 11 use cases presented[0], by virtue of
imposing no restrictions whatsoever we believe this licence meets all of
them.
(If the W3C strongly wishes to have extra reassurance that their name
will not be wrongly associated with derivative works, then perhaps an
addendum could be considered to remind users of what trademark law forbids.)
The W3C's authority over HTML5 is due to its benevolent stewardship of
the specification and to the commitment of the vendors concerned to work
together under its aegis. We do not think that this authority requires
or benefits from attempts to reinforce it with legal restrictions which,
if actually enforced, would be a negative rather than positive thing for
the web.
Gerv
[0] http://www.w3.org/2011/03/html-license-options.html#usecases
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Apr/0000.html
[2] http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/